Nice Suit! — Swimming and Diving enjoy new Olympic level swimsuits

It sounds impressive, and the Albion College Swimming and Diving teams think so, too. This year at the MIAA, the Britons will display the newest swim suit technology that falls within NCAA regulations.

The Fastskin3 Super Elite swim suits, designed by Speedo, are completely water resistant, and according to Swimming and Diving coach Keith Havens, you can see the water running off of the suits in beads when you get out of the water. The suits use a 3D zoned compression fabric system, which clings to a swimmers body, making them more hydrodynamic and reducing skin friction drag by up to 2.7%.

The suits will not only give the teams a competitive advantage when they compete in the MIAA championships, but the swimmers will also have a psychological advantage.

“You put [the suits] on, you feel fast, so you go fast,” Havens said.

Specifications for suits have changed in recent years because of the rapid increase in swimsuit technology. According to Havens, the NCAA used to allow full body suits for men, but they no longer do. Men are now only permitted to wear suits from knees to waist.

“Two or three years ago you could have a full body [suit], arms, legs, and everything,” Havens said. “That made a serious difference.”

When Brad Melpolder, a Hamilton sophomore and current MIAA swimmer of the week, found out he would be wearing a Fastskin3 Super Elite, he was very pleased.

“I had heard they were making new [suits] for the Olympics and those were the ones we were getting, so I was pretty excited,” Melpolder said.

Getting into the suits is not quite as exciting, though. It takes the help of multiple people to get a woman into her body suit and according to Melpolder the diameter of the leg holes for a suit are about the diameter of a hockey puck.

“The full body suits are a lot more difficult to get into,” Melpolder said. “The Blue 70s that they had two years ago were a lot stretchier, but they don’t really have those anymore.”

It remains to be seen whether these suits will help the Britons achieve their goals at the MIAA championships on Feb. 16- 18 in Holland, Michigan.

Kurt Miller is a senior from Ann Arbor, Michigan majoring in Mass Media Communications and Economics and Management. He's passionate about all things sports and was a member of Albion's men's soccer team for four years. Follow him on Twitter @ShirtMiller.